Posts Tagged ‘The Nicholsons at Dulwich’

This follows on nicely from the exhibition at Tate St.Ives; Winifred is the star for me, in this early period, which more or less finishes when Ben began to do his geometric abstracts. His paintings feature some rather irritating pantomime horses, not quite with the knees pointing the wrong way, but nearly. Also, he seems to have nicked some sailing ships from Alfred Wallis. The style is termed faux-naive, and it strikes a false note with me. for sure.

Winifred’s still lifes of flowers strike me as bearing a slight resemblance to Paul Nash, not so much content as surface and hue. There are also two portraits, one of a family looking out at the viewer and one of a father tending to a child. In addition to Nash, there is a hint of Stanley Spencer and perhaps, in the baby, Wallis and Gromit.

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Anyway, there’s a fine triangular Wallis of ships passing before icebergs, and Ben Nicholson’s rather shabby first abstraction, which has a charm of its own. Still the best Winifred I’ve seen, though, is the Window Sill at Lugano, which is at the Tate St.Ives show. The colours remind me of the great de Kooning poster which is in the Member’s Room of the Tate Modern. Can’t find the DK painting in any of my books; maybe its a detail.

Winifred Nicholson

Tate St. Ives

Some paintings and sculptures from the current show that I didn’t mention last week:

Riopelle, Perspectives

Little ingots of white and black paint massed together in his usual style against areas of deep, cold blue and dark red.

Frink

A human torso, half legs and arms, spread out like an animal carcase.

Hepworth, Torso

Beautiful bust of a heavy- hipped woman.

Lanyon, Turn Around

One of several intriguing box-type constructions.

Niki de Saint Phalle, Dracula

Hard to describe, so here’s a picture –

National Gallery

A couple more things to look out for in the newly opened basement gallery (wednesdays and Sundays):

The Battle of Valmy

That poor hussar lying dead on his back, with a cannonball hole in his breastplate – why has he got no boots on?

The Madonna and Child – I think it’s in the style of Duccio.

Dubufe – the Surprise

Wonder what it is?

DH Lawrence, the White Peacock

I was going on last week about how Lawrence larded every page of this, his first novel, with nature description. On reflection, I think its more than just the urge to describe; I think nature is almost another “character” in the narrative – it is stitched in to frame and echo the unfolding of the story in a way that transcends simple scene-setting; but I’m often wrong.

Orwell, Animal Farm

There’s a lovely passage in Crick’s biography, worth quoting in full:

“When Queen Elizabeth, whose literary adviser was Osbert Sitwell, sent the Royal Messenger to Secker and Warburg for a copy in November, he found them utterly sold out and had to go with horse, carriage, top hat and all, to the anarchist Freedom Bookshop, in Red Lion Street, where George Woodcock gave him a copy”.

The Killer Inside Me

Michael Winterbottom film from a Jim Thompson novel, starring Casey Affleck as a psychopathic deputy sheriff in Texas 50s and Jessica Alba as his prostitute girlfriend, who he beats to death quite coldly as part of a double murder, when it suits him. Later, he does the same thing to his fiancee. A horrible film, with two repulsive sequences – possibly three – which I found very compelling too; had to watch it to the end. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Affleck is brilliant; you want to beat him to death.